Patients routinely take one or more prescribed medications to treat illnesses. The pandemic of medication-related morbidity and mortality and the increasing rate and cost of medication-induced injuries is also well known in the art. Patients and society are burdened by emergency room visits and hospitalizations that often result from misadventures with prescription medications. Fortunately, disparate data sources provide useful insights into the interactions between two or more medications. Other data sources, referred to herein as intrinsic components, include personalized information related to a patient, such as patient lab test results, patient genetics, and a particular individual's history of adherence to prescription dosage schedules. Other data sources, referred to herein as extrinsic components, include information related to FDA warnings, Beers listed medications, and other non-patient specific information about a particular drug.
Currently, prescribers and pharmacists are unable to combine intrinsic and extrinsic components in a way that provides meaningful interventions with adequate procedures in place to avoid not only harmful interactions between two or more drugs, but also see potential harms related to other intrinsic components that may be patient-specific. There exists a further need in the art to integrate medication decision support with an internet-driven platform used by both prescribers and pharmacists.